Unlawful Seduction
by SaphfireFlame
Summary: After Alice has escaped to Mamoreal with the Vorpal Sword, the imprisoned Hatter takes a moment to puzzle out the meaning behind the Knave's command to "Arrest that girl for Unlawful Seduction!"


**This has been sitting on my desktop for months, and I only got up the courage to show it to my beta, Gabe, today. I feel like it's pretty difficult to write from the Mad Hatter's point of view, because his thoughts tend to go off in four directions at once and are derailed at the slightest bump. But Gabe found it funny, so I got up the nerve to post.**

**If you think I own any part of "Alice in Wonderland", you're as mad as the Hatter.**

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**Unlawful Seduction**

I slumped to the floor, crossing my legs and placing my hat beside me. The sounds of the Knave of Hearts leaving the dungeon echoed back to me, until finally I was alone in the silence with my thoughts. No more pressing matters- no more Alices to protect, or locks to pick, or hats to make. I could finally concentrate on that one persistent thought.

"Arrest that girl- for Unlawful Seduction!"

The phrase echoed through my mind, bouncing off the inside of my skull, and making an utter mess of the tea things. It was especially irritating because of his strange way of cutting perfectly good sentences short. But, what a riddle! What a nonsensical thing to say!

And they called me mad.

Well, one teacup at a time.

Unlawful Seduction. "Unlawful" meaning "lacking in law, lawyers, legality, legislation, and so forth. Not filled with law." So, filled with something else I suppose? Freedom, rule breaking? Something of that sort I'm sure. It all boils down to "not allowed". And "Seduction" implies doing Sly Things with Fluttering Eyelashes and Sweet Words and Smiles That Hold Promises.

I do wonder who he was arresting.

The only people who were in the room before the Knave burst in were me, Mally, and Too-Tall Alice. Why must that child always be too tall or too small? It was really most annoying. After all, had she been her right-proper-Alice-size last night, when she returned my hat and said she wouldn't leave without me, I could have just leaned down ever so slightly and…

No, no, No, NO, **NO! **Bad Tarrant, bad, bad, bad, Tarrant! You're not allowed such Wicked Thoughts, ye _slurvish_ Hatter, fer Alice is Th' Alice, Champion Alice, E'eryone's Alice an' yer jus' _slurking urpal slackish scrum…_

"Fez." I muttered softly into the darkness.

Well, the Knave was pointing at Alice, but she was so very much too tall, it would've been harder not to point at her. Might it have been me? Because of my Wicked Thoughts? But I'd never said a word about those Thoughts, knowing it was naught for usal, not to Mally, not to Thack, not to McTwisp, not to Chess, not to Mirana, certainly not to Alice… how did the Knave know?

Could he read minds?

I curled up at the thought, and tasted metal as I bit one of my thimble-covered fingers. This was bad. This was monstrously, mammothly, massively, mightily, monumentally Bad. If the Knave could read my mind, he'd Know Everything Important, and I had a lot of Important in my head.

Like where Alice was, and the Plan, and my mother's recipe for scones, and the best way to brew tea, and the Hightopp family secret for stitching up brims, and where I'd hidden my very best tea service for the Tea Party we'd have with Alice on Frabjous Day…

No, he couldn't know that, I decided. _I _didn't know where I'd hidden my best tea service. I hadn't put it in the tub or on the trolley, nor had I stuck it in a hat box or behind the head board…

Oh, but if the Knave could read minds, he wouldn't have wasted so much time asking me where Alice was, and getting so angry. He might have stayed for so long just because he wanted to hit something, but he would have left happy and I would've been left without my head. And if he didn't get it then, he would have known when I saw Alice in the throne room.

No, the Knave couldn't read minds. What a relief.

But if he couldn't read minds, how did he know I had Wicked Thoughts? He couldn't. And since he couldn't know about the Wicked Thoughts, he couldn't have been arresting me for Unlawful Seduction. So it must have been someone else…

What _had_ Mally been up to without me to watch her? How had she managed to get a job in the palace? Or at least got herself a uniform?

But no, it was not like Mally to Draw Others In with Whispered Words and Soft Touches that Made Promises. She was far more likely to have lain in wait and grabbed some poor page-mouse rushing about alone, held her hat pin to its throat, and threatened to stick it if it didn't give up its uniform.

Actually, that's exactly what she had done. I knew, because she had told me everything she had done since I'd left the tea party during the night when she'd been picking the lock at my ankle. Or rather, attempting to pick the lock- she never got very far.

Maybe that was what the Knave was talking about? But that would be Unlawful Springing, not Seduction.

So maybe it was Alice after all? Unless Chess was hanging about invisibly… but if I didn't know Chess was there, how was the Knave to know? That took us back around to the Knave's questionable mind-reading abilities that we had already decided he didn't possess, which was a very Good Thing indeed…

So it must be Alice.

Which left me with one burning question.

Who had Alice seduced?

Alice had certainly regained much of her muchness, she was so very much more muchier since I had thrown her to safety on my Hat… had that truly been the day before yesterday? It was so very odd to have Time moving along again, and at such a fast clip. I shall have to get him a thank you present once the Jabberwocky has been slain.

But setting Time aside for a moment, I could only think of one reason for Alice to Unlawfully Seduce anyone at Salazen Grum, and that would be to get the Vorpal Sword. Even then, muchier Alice didn't seem like the kind of person to Sneak and Trick her way into anything. She had always been more the type to glare you into submission, even when she had been a wee little tyke with hair that needed cutting, sitting down uninvited at a private Tea Party.

Clean cup, clean cup, move down, move down…

Mally had told me that the Blade was guarded by the Bandersnatch, and Alice had taken the eye that Mally had stolen from the fruminous creature. And she'd returned not only hale and healthy and decidedly in one piece and muchier than ever, but with the bandage undone from her arm and her cuts healing, so the Bandersnatch must have taken enough of a liking to her to lick the wounds.

Was that what the Knave meant? She'd won the Bandersnatch over to our side and he'd found out? But that would be Unlawful Subduing.

Beside, who had ever heard of Seducing a dangerous beast? Even _I _wasn't so mad as to believe it would work.

Seduction, Seduction... A nagging little thought wriggled its way into my consciousness and tried to make itself heard over the clamor.

A vague memory of standing in the Queen's dressing room, placing hat after hat on her bulbous head, laughing at the lickspittle, false courtiers with their false noses and bellies and double chins... and another lady rushing in and up to the Bluddy Bigh Hid to whisper in her ear- the lady's own ears were so large you'd think she'd know what a proper whisper was, but then again, the false bits probably made it harder for her to hear, and I had been standing so very, very close, settling another hat atop that colossal cranium...

The whispers of the memory snaked through my mind like a ribbon of smoke, elusive and so easily disrupted...

"Just now... in the corridor... with my very own eyes, Majesty... the tall girl, Um (what a most unimaginative name for his muchly imaginative Alice, McTwisp ought to have done better, but the poor thing was always so nervous)... so close... Stayne..."

And the Bloody Big Head was suddenly red all over, and the Queen had leapt to her feet and screamed the Knave's name so that it echoed all over the castle.

I turned back to the wriggling thought and very politely (it is always best to be polite to those most elusive thoughts, especially if they're only half-baked, to keep them from going off in a sulk and leaving all together) thanked it for showing me the memory but- and I don't mean to offend- but what did that particular memory have to do with the price of two-penny lace in Queast, or, more to the point, with who Alice had Unlawfully Seduced?

The thought wondered absently if Styane might have been Unlawfully Seduced, and winked itself out.

I sat, shocked at the thought for a moment, and then burst out laughing. It was not my typically mad titters or giggles, but truly insane laughter, which grows in your gut, bubbles up your throat, and forces its way out your mouth to freedom in the open air in great guffaws. The sort that fills the space you're in, spills into the corridor, and skips merrily down the halls, hand-in-hand with other laughs, and singing rhyming songs.

_My_ Alice, Unlawfully Seducing Knave Stayne? The thought was preposterous.

I was cut off suddenly by a rickety clanging sound. The cardsman in charge of the jail had dragged his weapon along the bars of my cell, hollering at me to be silent.

"Sorry…" I croaked.

"Yeah, well, keep it down, ye hear? Ye're a right disconcerting one, an hour left b'fore ye lose yer head, and what are ye doin'? Laughing like it's all a bloody great joke…" the card's mumbling faded away as he walked away down the corridor. I quickly began scrambling to gather my scattered thoughts, pouncing on a couple and managing to snag another just before it escaped to the next cell.

Finally, thoughts corralled and returned to my previous position.

We'd determined that the Seducer was not Mally, or Chess, or myself, so it had to be Alice. And we'd eliminated the Bandersnatch and the Knave as the Seducees.

A maid passing by my workshop prison had said something about McTwisp being found passed out in an alcove… but the silly rabbit was prone to faint at the slightest provocation, so that was unlikely. So that left only…

Who?

I racked my brains. There really was no one else I could think of.

An Epiphany struck me suddenly, with enough force to knock me top over teakettle, the chain clinking and clattering until I ended up upside down against the wall after only one and a half rotations. I quickly scrambled back to my thinking spot, carefully moving my Hat to the side, out of harm's way.

The only one left… was me.

She'd been in my workshop just before the Red Queen's- _Donal Wyth Bluddy Bigh Hid_- shrieks of "Hat Man!" had summoned me to her. Alice had been there, returning my Hat to me.

Well, there _had_ been Whispered Words, words about trying on beautiful hats… and when I'd tumbled over the edge into madness, there had been Soft Touches that Made Promises that things would be all right, just as long as she kept smiling that Sweet Smile and looking at me with that meaningful look that Held the Secret to my sanity- or at least to a Madness that was fun and carefree rather than dark and destructive. And she'd given me the most provoking look after I'd scolded her for always being the wrong size, a bemused look veiled behind Fluttering Lashes… I'd been completely Drawn In…

My Alice was such a Sly Thing.

_My_ Alice? When had _that _started, I wonder? Naughty, naughty, naughty…

Unless I truly _had_ been Unlawfully Seduced. But did that merely make me Her Hatter, and she stayed The Alice? This was all dreadfully confusing.

I don't feel like I've been Seduced. Unlawfully or otherwise.

But it all fit.

Perhaps, perhaps someone had seen? Someone had crept about and spied, had poked noses and ears and fingers where they didn't belong, where they weren't wanted… Probably that lady with the big ears, she seemed to like to find secrets and spread lies. And she had seen and made Assumptions (which are horrid little things, really. All smug and know-it-all-ish. Not nice things at all) and then she had gone and told the Knave.

It didn't mean I really _had_ been Seduced. Maybe it only looked like I had been. Though if I had been Seduced, I don't think I'd really mind it, so long as it was Alice doing the Seducing.

They really ought to ask the parties involved before arresting people.

It almost made me sad, somehow, that I was about to be executed. I didn't mind dying for the Rebellion. And I was even a little glad that my death would be because I had helped Alice escape to Mamoreal. I hadn't felt sad before. I had felt victorious.

But now I wanted to Know. I _needed_ to Know- had I been Seduced? I couldn't stop myself from wishing that I wasn't going to die very soon, wishing to see Alice again. It quite put a damper on the mood, and made my cuffs look positively _mimsey_. And we really couldn't have that. It was going to be a formal execution- I had to look my best.

I was concentrating on cheering up my shirt cuffs when my concentration was rudely broken by a drawling voice from the cell door.

"I've always liked that hat."


End file.
